FCA Regulatory Update from UKCCC 2025 - Summary

On 11 September 2025 John Wightman, Head of Consumer Finance at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) provided a Regulatory Update at the CSA's UK Credit & Collections Conference (UKCCC). The FCA has now released a summary of this update:

UKCCC FCA Regulatory Update - UKCCC 2025

John Wightman, Head of Consumer Finance at the Financial Conduct Authority, delivered a regulatory update focusing on their new five-year strategy, progress in embedding the Consumer Duty and future workplans in the debt purchaser, collection and administration sector.

Key messages have been summarised below.

FCA’s 5-Year Strategy (linked here)

The FCA outlined their vision for their new strategy, which is to deepen trust, rebalance risk, support growth and improve lives. The strategy focuses on four strategic priorities:

• Helping Consumers Navigate Financial Lives: Collaborating with industry to ensure consumers receive the right information and support at the right time.

• Supporting Growth: Enabling investment, encouraging innovation, and reinforcing the UK’s global competitiveness.

• Fighting Financial Crime: Focusing on disrupting criminals and supporting firms as a line of defence.

• Becoming a Smarter Regulator: Using data and technology to be more efficient, outcome-focused, and proportionate.

The FCA confirmed that while supporting growth is a key element of its strategy, consumer protection remains a central objective. The strategy seeks to respond to calls for reduced regulatory burden by leveraging data and technology, while maintaining a regulatory approach that is both predictable and proportionate.

The FCA also touched upon several wider reforms that are either leading on or supporting to reduce the burden on firms and support a well-functioning financial services sector:

• Senior Managers & Certification Regime (SM&CR): To further ease firm burden, the FCA reminded firms of the SM&CR consultation paper, that aims to streamline and clarify requirements. The consultation was to close on 7 October and so firms were encouraged to have their say.

• Data & Regulatory Returns: The FCA emphasised key steps that it is taking to redesign and streamline consumer credit regulatory returns with two returns being removed and four returns being redesigned. New returns and Product Sales Data will lead to greater visibility over the credit activities and will also reduce the need for ad hoc data requests which will ease the reporting burden on firms. Firms were also reminded of the launch of the My FCA portal that allows them to access Connect, RegData, and Online Invoicing in one place.

• Consumer Credit Act (CCA) Reform: The FCA welcomed the Government’s consultation launched in May to reform the CCA. Aiming for a regime that is relevant, digital, and outcomes-driven, such an opportunity is key in strengthening consumer understanding and aligning with the Consumer Duty.

• Modernising the Redress System: The FCA highlighted its collaboration with the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) & HMT including its proposals to modernise the redress framework with clarity, consistency, and predictability for both consumers and firms.

Consumer Duty Progress

The FCA identified several positive changes that Debt Collection firms have implemented since the implementation of the Duty such as:

Partnering with organisations such as StepChange and Dementia Friends to support consumers with vulnerable characteristics.

Enhancing digital offerings and support channels, such as online portals or benefit calculators, to meets customers’ needs.

Investing in customer focus groups and feedback surveys to enable timely feedback on customer journeys.

The FCA also shared key areas of focus for the next 12 months, including outcomes monitoring, fair value and consumer understanding, as well as how FCA requirements apply through the distribution chain.

Good and poor practice will continue to be published alongside case studies, as has been done over the last year on Consumer Duty board reports and work on supporting customers in vulnerable circumstances. This is intended to support firms in moving towards an outcomes focused approach.

Future workplans in the debt purchaser, collection and administration sector

As announced in April, the FCA will no longer be publishing portfolio letters and instead will communicate supervisory priorities via a small number of market reports published once a year. These reports will include communications relevant to different types of firms and insights from the FCA’s supervisory work, giving firms clarity and certainty about FCA expectations, as well as detailing the various risks and opportunities seen. Proactive stakeholder engagement will continue to be used to set out expectations, deliver key messages, and share insights into areas of focus for supervisory work.

The FCA outlined some of the sector specific key areas of focus for the next 12 months:

• Firms’ Communications: In March 2024, the FCA published a joint statement with the UK Regulators’ Network, highlighting the need for firms to ensure their communications are supportive in tone and avoid language that is intimidating or threatening. The FCA highlighted examples of some good practices it had observed, such as firms layering information to provide consumer support, enhance consumer understanding, and to encourage customers to make contact for a positive conversation about their financial circumstances. However, the FCA also identified concerning practices where some firms fell short of expectations. The FCA intends to explore this further using a data led approach, to assess whether firms’ communications provide helpful, supportive messages and do not bombard consumers. Firms not using their permissions: Firms have an obligation to regularly review and update their regulatory permissions, removing these where they are not needed. The FCA has identified instances where this obligation has not been met. The FCA will continue to take swift action to cancel unused or unnecessary permissions.

• Fair Value: Earlier this year, the FCA carried out a Fair Value review which included a small number of firms. Several areas of good practice as well as areas for improvement were identified and individual feedback to those firms will be provided in the coming months. Where firms charge debt collection fees to customers, we expect them to demonstrate their assessment and justification on why their price benefit relationship is both reasonable and aligned with the principles set out in the FCA Handbook, including CONC and the Consumer Duty.

• Disputed Debts: The FCA’s intelligence indicates that some consumers continue to face lengthy delays in achieving resolution to disputed debts, often experiencing long periods of inactivity and having their accounts passed between firms without progress. This falls short of expectations under CONC and the Consumer Duty’s Consumer Support outcome, which seeks to remove unnecessary barriers and friction. The FCA had previously raised these concerns in 2021 and 2023 and will continue to engage with firms on this issue, using data to identify those not meeting FCA expectations.

• Complaints: In 2024, the FCA observed significant variation in the number of complaints reported by firms, with some recording high volumes while many reported none. This raises concerns that some firms may not be properly identifying or recording complaints or may lack the transparent procedures required under the FCA’s Dispute Resolution rules. Reviews also found that some firms failed to signpost their complaint procedures, offered only limited channels for lodging complaints, or used complex language that could create friction and hinder customer understanding. The FCA has shared feedback with these firms and will continue to monitor complaints data across the portfolio.